Currently, the rewards mechanism will cap the amount of accrued rewards after 1 year. For example, if the coins sit in the same address for more than a full year, the amount of rewards will stop accruing at 5% total. This mechasism is being changed to cap the amount of accrued rewards after 1 month. This means in order to receive the maximum amount of rewards, a user must claim them at least once per month. This in turn, changes the amount of rewards to 5.1% per year.

This change is being made to encourage users to be active and use KMD more often.

Currently, every 2000 blocks, there is a 64 block period in which notary nodes are unable to mine with easy difficulty. After block 1000000, this 64 block period will be removed. We have deployed a new method that calibrates the non-notary mining to 25%, and this process also performs the calibration to non-notary hashrate that the free for all period was designed to achieve. With the removal of the free for all, the mining returns will not go through any dramatic changes every 2000 blocks, but rather stay relatively constant throughout.

This change is being made to discourage miners from only mining during these 64 block periods.